Chance

The Printz collection

The furniture was French Art Deco from the late thirties, the work of a well-known designer by the name of Eugene Printz. The set comprised a desk, a bookshelf, and two chairs. It was made of palm wood and oxidized brass, and worth a considerable amount of money. It would have been worth even more but some of the brass was missing from the bookshelf and desk, several strips that should have run along the bottom edges of each. He’d gotten it that way and had paid accordingly. Still, it was a beautiful set and he’d always enjoyed how it looked in the big house he’d shared with his wife and daughter. Viewed now, in the confines of the small apartment, the stuff seemed sad and out of place, if not outright ridiculous. Over time it had come to irritate him and he’d begun to consider selling it. There was a dealer who specialized in such stuff, a black gentleman of perhaps seventy or more, down on Market Street. Chance couldn’t recall the man’s name but he could remember the location of his store, which was within walking distance of his office, and resolved to go there at his earliest convenience. An opportunity presented itself within the week, a cancellation butting up against his lunch hour, and he set out on foot for the dealer’s showroom.

Generally speaking, a walk in the city was something he enjoyed. On the day in question he could not shake the feeling that he was being shown the future. It was something less than what one might have hoped for. The flames had died in the East Bay hills but what felt to be the entire Bay Area remained covered in ash. Cars were made to appear uniform in color. It lay thick in the corners of things like drifts of dirty snow. A trio of young Asian women he took as college students passed along the sidewalk wearing surgical masks. This is how it will look, he thought, moving past the women. It will look like this, and then it will look worse.

There had come a point in the evacuation of the East Bay hills, their narrow streets jammed with cars, when the firefighters had called for the distraught residents to abandon their vehicles, to flee on foot. The fires of Richmond had moved east and south at alarming speeds. The Berkeley Hills were suddenly ablaze, the night sky raining sparks. The citizenry had declined the directive, preferring to ram one another in their flaming cars. College professors and accountants, dot-commers or whatever it was they called themselves, the writers and artists, the academics and doctors of the Berkeley Hills… They had driven over one another in the black smoke like insects gone mad, like blindworms, for God’s sake. He’d watched it all on the late-night newscasts from the relative safety of his apartment. What was it to horde or sell? What did his fancy French furniture amount to when already the birds of prey were increasing their number?

It was in a state of just such apocalyptic fervor, brow damp and lungs burning, that he reached the building, an old brick warehouse from before the war situated on a narrow, well-kept alley just off Market Street. Entering, he could hear at once a man’s voice, a bright falsetto animated with rage. “Are you his bitch, then…? Is that how it’s going to be?” The voice broke off at the sound of the bell that signaled the front door and Chance soon spied the owner of both business and voice in conversation with a young man of some apparently Latino extraction in a black skintight T-shirt, skintight black leather jeans, and pointy-toed black leather boots that rose to just above his ankles. The older man was as Chance remembered him, well over six feet tall, dramatically thin and flamingly gay. He was even dressed as Chance remembered, in favor of rings and things, ascots, and loud sport jackets. If anything, he was older than Chance had recalled, closer to eighty than seventy. A guy that age, Chance thought, black and gay? One could imagine that he’d seen some things.

The old man cut short his rant. “Young man,” he said, addressing Chance while turning from the other as if he’d suddenly ceased to exist, his voice no longer shrill but rising pleasantly to float among the rafters. “What news of the Printz collection?”

“Jesus. You remembered.”

“Of course. But let me see… There was a desk and chair.” He paused. “And a cabinet!”

“Bookcase and two chairs, but that’s not bad. When was it that I was here… two, three years ago?”

The old man’s hands fluttered in the muted light. “Who keeps track of such things? But there was something missing…”

“Some bits of brass.”

“Ah, yes. A shame.”

As Chance and the old man spoke the leather boy drifted away, disappearing into some dim recess of the old building. It was the musty, cavernous feel of the place that had drawn Chance on his initial visit. He had been new to the neighborhood then, out exploring. Surely, he’d thought, this was a place where treasures lay in wait, gathering dust in the shadows.

“I’m sure you told me your name,” Chance said. He put out his hand.

“Carl,” the old man told him. They shook. “And you… are a doctor, as I recall.”

“A neuropsychiatrist. Eldon Chance.”

The old man laughed. “Of course, Dr. Chance. How does one forget that? I remember furniture but lose names. To what do I owe the honor?” He went on without waiting a reply. “I have recently acquired a cabinet that might just go with that set of yours…”

Chance held up his hands. “I wish. I’m thinking of selling what I have.”

Carl raised his eyebrows.

“I’m in the midst of a divorce,” Chance said. He was still not quite used to saying it out loud. “House is up for sale. I’m living in an apartment.”

“Say no more,” Carl told him. “I’m sorry, sorry to hear that.”

“Me too.” Chance had taken photographs of the furniture and put them on his laptop, slung now by way of a canvas travel case over one shoulder. He lifted the case. “I have pictures,” he said.

Carl led the way to a large table where they looked at the pictures. The old man studied them at some length. “Beautiful,” he said. “The size of that desk makes it unusual. It’s a wonderful piece, as are the others. What do you hope to get for them?”

“I was hoping you might tell me.”

The old man studied the pictures a moment longer. “Without that metalwork… fifty, sixty thousand, maybe.”

“What about with the metalwork? Just to make me feel bad.”

“Twice that.”

“Christ, just for some brass?”

“It’s the difference between selling to someone in the market for a nice grouping and a serious collector. Do you know what the set looked like originally?”

“I’ve seen pictures, in books.”

“Then you know. The strips were substantial, etched with acid, quite lovely, really. You have one piece of it left here, in the bookshelf.” He pointed to one of the photographs.

Chance nodded. “Yeah, I know. Guess the way to look at it… the set had been complete I would never have gotten it for what I did. Still…”

“It’s a big swing.”

“In a tough time, let me tell you.” Chance spent his days listening to the woes of others. Rarely did he air his own, particularly of late, in the absence of wife or family, or even, when he thought about it, of a close friend. “Didn’t imagine I’d ever want to sell,” he said, indulging now in the perception that Carl was in fact the type of guy one might tell one’s troubles to. “Always entertained the fantasy that someday I’d be poking around in a place like this, and there it would be, a pile of brass runners gathering dust on top of somebody’s armoire or something.” He smiled and shrugged it off. “How might we proceed?” he asked. “If I wanted to go for the sixty?”

Carl tugged at a short goatee that was almost completely white and neatly trimmed. A moment passed. “Let me show you something,” he said.

They left Chance’s computer on the table and walked toward the rear of the store. There was a hole cut in a wall back there to make a window with a little counter on it. There was what appeared to be a workroom on the other side. The window did not allow for much of a view. What Carl wanted him to look at was the cabinet he had spoken of. It was indeed a wonderful piece, made also of palm wood with brass trimming.

“Beautiful,” Chance said.

The old man nodded. “Brass work is not exactly the same as what should have been on yours but not so dissimilar either. And, as yours is missing…” He let his voice trail away. “Let’s just say I thought of you. Odd you should stop by when you did.”

“Yes, well, were I buying instead of selling…” His eyes clocked to the cabinet. “Probably out of my price range even then.”

“Oh, it’s not original,” Carl put in almost before Chance could finish.

Chance just looked at him.

“The piece was in very bad shape when I found it. No brass at all. It’s not even by Printz, or at least it’s not signed by him, but I could see there were possibilities.”

Chance looked more closely at the metalwork. “I looked into having mine replaced once. None of the samples I was shown were anything like what I’d seen in the photographs. And nothing like this.” He faced the old man.

“It was all in the process,” Carl told him. “For one thing, they used natural sponges to get the patterns. No one uses those anymore. There were other materials involved too, acids and dyes… Suffice it to say, it is a process lost to time. Part of what adds to its value.”

Chance looked once more at the cabinet. “And this, then?” His hand brushed the metalwork. “Do you know who did it?”

The old man smiled. He went to the little window and called for someone he referred to as D. Whether this was Dee as in a given name or simply the letter D as the shortened form of some longer name, the old man didn’t say. In another moment or two a very large man, which is to say a man built roughly along the lines of a refrigerator, appeared on the other side of the window. The man rested a formidable forearm on the little counter and bent to look out. The act allowed for a pair of observations, both in regard to the man’s head, which was large and round, though not disproportionally so given the size of the arm resting on the counter. The first of these was that the man had no hair, neither on his face nor his scalp. There was none. Chance took him as suffering from alopecia universalis, an extremely rare condition by which every last bit of body hair is lost. The causes were not well understood. And while on certain even more rare occasions the hair might at some point return, as rapidly and mysteriously as it left, the condition was generally thought to be permanent. The second thing one noticed, which one could in no way avoid noticing, was the large black widow spider maybe half again as big as a silver dollar tattooed dead center on the great expanse of otherwise unmarked flesh that covered the big man’s skull.

The big man didn’t say anything but looked from the window with flat dark eyes, from Chance to Carl and back again. Given the man’s size in relation to the window, the effect was that of making eye contact with a caged beast.

“Come on out here,” Carl said, careful, Chance thought, to be overtly cheerful in making the request. A door soon opened and D appeared. Chance guessed him to be well over three hundred pounds, though not much taller than Chance himself, who was five nine but thin as a rail. He wore a khaki-colored military-looking jacket and military cargo-style pants well soiled with a variety of paints and stains above black combat boots equally tarnished. The boots, Chance noticed, were worn without recourse to laces. The jacket was worn open over a black T-shirt with some red writing across the chest that Chance was unable to quite make out. There was an Army Rangers patch on the sleeve of the jacket. It was difficult, given the man’s size, his smooth, hairless face and head, to be precise about his age. Chance was willing to put him somewhere in his early to mid-thirties. He was an unusual-looking person to say the least but in no way misshapen or ugly. His features in fact were almost fine, organized by way of straight, well-ordered lines above a powerful jaw and thick neck and within only a moment or two of making the initial observations regarding size and lack of hair, one could not quite imagine, or even wish upon him, save perhaps for the unfortunate tattoo, any other look than the look he had, that of a heavyweight Mr. Clean in black and tan.

Carl introduced them and D smiled a bit at hearing Chance’s name. “Dr. Chance,” he repeated.

“That’s what I told him.”

D looked to the old man. “Great minds, huh?”

The three stood for a moment or two in silence.

“The doc brought pictures,” Carl said.

They returned to the table and Chance’s pictures. Carl pointed to the bit of brass on the bookshelf. “Look familiar?”

D nodded.

“So what do you think?”

“Sure. He’s not in a big hurry.”

D looked once more at Chance, then turned and walked away.

“A man of few words,” Carl said.

“You’re telling me what, exactly?” Chance asked. “D can make this look like the original?” He waved at the photographs still on display.

“He’s good,” Carl said. “As you have seen.”

“Yes he is, and then what? You would put it on sale, as an original?”

Carl just looked at him.

“There wouldn’t be ways… of checking…”

Carl shrugged.

Chance stood in the muted light of the big room. He was trying to formulate his next question. “What are the odds?” he asked at length.

“That furniture is signed, as I recall.”

Chance nodded.

“That’s generally enough. Did you buy from a dealer or a private party?”

“Private party.”

“Are they still alive?”

“It was an estate sale, some guy, selling off stuff that had belonged to his mother. I’ve forgotten his name.”

“That’s a plus. If it had been a dealer, if the set were to show up at some later time and the dealer were to see it and recognized it and so on and so forth… that kind of thing.” He waved his hands. “Private parties are good,” he said.

“Still…”

The old man nodded. “Yes, there’s always a chance.”

The two men looked at each other.

“How about that?” Carl asked him.

Chance went out as he had come in, by way of the door fronting on Market Street, his head spinning with possibility. He found the sunlight blinding after the darkness of the building. Turning north in the direction of his office, he noted the boy in black across the street. The youth appeared to be smoking something in a glass pipe with a pair of look-alike companions. Chance took it for crack, or perhaps some form of methamphetamine. The boy looked in Chance’s direction before inclining toward his friends in a manner that might only have been taken for conspiratorial so that in heading up Market Chance was aware of all three looking in his direction, and averted his gaze. Still, in rounding a corner at the end of the block, he was afforded a last glimpse of the youth as he crossed through traffic to reenter the old man’s place of business.